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Reading rec.juggling in a dedicated newsreader

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Dave Cheetham

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Dec 8, 2009, 8:54:28 PM12/8/09
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Hi, folks.

Following up on some previous discussion, I thought I'd give you a a
little information regarding how I set up rec.juggling in a dedicated
newsreader.

My requirement was that it be accessible from multiple locations (eg.
work, home, and friends computer), including synching of read/unread
status, but also that it should be user-friendly for reading, posting,
sorting, and viewing.

First of all, I set up an account with www.eternal-september.org for my
news server. It was very easy to set up, and the initial email that you
get sent after you join has all the details you need to get started with
whatever newsreader you pick.

I tried a bunch of different newsreaders, but found that the one that
best suited my needs was Thunderbird. It was simple to set up (though
you'll have to activate the option to force authentication with your
news server (there's very clear details of how to do this in the FAQ
section of eternal-september <
http://www.eternal-september.org/index.php?showpage=faq#Registration-No-Mail
>. But once you're subscribed to rec.juggling, it's nice and easy.

Viewing, sorting and threading is simple, too. I've enabled threading
and sort-by-date, and using the filter to show "threads with unread" I
can very quickly see where to point my attention. I've set up my menu
bar to be quite minimalist, with only buttons to retreive new headers,
create new thread, and reply to current post (and when the ThreadViews
extension updates for TB3, I'll have a button to toggle between "View
all threads" and "View threads with unread". I also set up the layout
for the whole window to give me a list of all threads (or just ones with
unread messages) on the left (with checkboxes to expand/collapse the
posts within each thread (when expanded, they're tabbed in, as per the
IJDB interface), and the selected post on the right. It's a very
intuitive system, and doesn't have a lot of the functions (eg. scoring
and binary downloading, etc.) that I found got in the way with other
newsreaders, though with Thunderbirds extensibility, I can install
add-on in future if I require more functionality in these areas in future.

As for accessibility and synching over multiple locations, I have been
able to manage this using Dropbox. Dropbox is a cross platform
application that enables easy synching between multiple locations and
OSs, and even offers portable access. I've set this up on my work
computer, home computer, and on a USB stick that also serves as a
keyring. One of the options of Thunderbird is to specify the location
of your profile folder by modifying the profiles.ini file, so I was able
to place my profile in my Dropbox folder, and access the synched version
from two static installs (home and work) and one portable install (USB
keyring). Full details of how to move your Thunderbird profile are
available from < http://www.mozilla.org/support/thunderbird/profile >.

Dropbox has a free option which provides you with 2GB of space, and if
you use this link < https://www.dropbox.com/referrals/NTM0MTA0MjY5 >
you'll get a bonus 250MB. This is more than enough to synch your
Thunderbird profile. There's also a bonus if you don't feel like
messing around with where you put your profiles - Thunderbird has a
portable version, which you can place (in its entirety) into your
Dropbox folder, and run a synched version of the whole application from
anywhere.

I've quite enjoyed trying all of these options out, and I appreciate the
help and advice that those of you more experienced than I were able to
provide. I hope this post can help anyone out who's interested in
trying a dedicated newsreader for reading rec.juggling, and I'll be
happy to answer any other questions about how I set things up, and how
it all works.

Cheers,
Dave

Little Paul

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Dec 9, 2009, 11:05:02 AM12/9/09
to
On 2009-12-09, Dave Cheetham <dche...@no.spam.gmail.nospam.com> wrote:
> Hi, folks.
>
> Following up on some previous discussion, I thought I'd give you a a
> little information regarding how I set up rec.juggling in a dedicated
> newsreader.

<snip>

Marvelous! Thanks for writing this up Dave, I'm sure it will be useful
to someone (if nothing else, it's a post to point people at next time
the subject comes up)

-Paul
--
http://paulseward.com

Guy G

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Dec 10, 2009, 5:25:35 AM12/10/09
to
Dave Cheetham wrote:
>
> Hi, folks.
>
<snip>

Ahhh, closure. Mmmm.

It's nice to have all this summed up somewhere for future reference. The
whole synching issue was what made me use the IJDb in the first place.
Now I know that if I ever want to go back to newsreaders, someone else has
already done the legwork and provided clear instructions. Wonderful.

> Cheers,
> Dave

Indeed. Cheers Dave.

Guy

--
----== posted via www.jugglingdb.com ==----

Dave Cheetham

unread,
Dec 10, 2009, 6:50:49 PM12/10/09
to
On 10/12/2009 9:25 PM, Guy G wrote:
> Dave Cheetham wrote:
>>
>> Hi, folks.
>>
> <snip>
>
> Ahhh, closure. Mmmm.
>
> It's nice to have all this summed up somewhere for future reference. The
> whole synching issue was what made me use the IJDb in the first place.
> Now I know that if I ever want to go back to newsreaders, someone else has
> already done the legwork and provided clear instructions. Wonderful.
>
>> Cheers,
>> Dave
>
> Indeed. Cheers Dave.
>
> Guy
>
>
>

Glad I could help. As a bit of extra info about synching, I found that
getting the two standard installs to use the same (synched) profiles
folder was relatively easy. Getting the portable version to use the
same one was a little trickier. The breakthrough happened when I
realised that the TB portable readme file, which suggests that the
profile folder must be a subdirectory of the app folder, was actually
incorrect. The *.ini file uses relative paths, so I could put in a
bunch of "..\"s and have it find the profile folder whereever I wanted it.

Dave

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